A Year of Absence


It's been just under a year since I last wrote for this blog. I don't really know why I stopped, but I guess life just gets busy and you get caught up in so much that you don't take time to reflect. But I think that's what I need to do now.

It's been a very eventful year from last April to now. My partner and I got our own flat, I passed my driving test, and we went on a few small breaks in between around Scotland. We spent a lot of time with friends and family, went to a wedding, and welcomed my nephew to the world. The past month or so, however, has been challenging. The Coronavirus crisis has put almost the entire world on hold and has really affected the UK in the past few weeks. My life has been sort of flipped upside down in this crisis due to my employment situation. I won't go in to too much detail but, in a nutshell, I was due to start my first proper full-time job (what I thought would be the start of my career) a few weeks ago. On my start date, I was told I couldn't start due to the Coronavirus situation, and my job offer was withdrawn a few days later. This has left me in an unfortunate position of being between jobs, at a time when a lot of the country is on lockdown. It's not an ideal situation, but there are plenty more people in worse positions than me at this point. I'll get by okay, I don't doubt that at all. But amongst all of this uncertainty, I feel like I have found the time to step back.

It's important to take a step back, hit pause, and just reflect. Everything begins to blend into one blurred memory and I feel I've lost sight of a lot of things - not prioritising the right things, not spending enough time with people, not taking care of my own physical and mental health. When I was writing before, it gave me an element of control and grounding. My posts (albeit sometimes pretentious - thank you Glasgow Uni) gave me a sense of purpose and belonging. Even if nobody was reading them, they allowed me to put my thoughts and feelings into words and just release them to the world. I know I've written something similar in a previous post about writing being a cathartic experience - and it's still something I strongly believe. In this year of absence from this blog, and writing in general, I have done a lot - but I have also missed a lot by not taking a time out every once in a while to reflect on my own life or my perception of the world around me.

With all the chaos, uncertainty, and anxiety in the world right now with the Coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis, I've found myself drawn back to this blog and back to writing for some reason. And I think it is due to the grounding it gives me, placing the world's and my life's events into a more manageable space. I honestly do not know what I am going to do over the next while, and don't know when I'll be back writing again - but I hope it's soon. By taking some time out, I hope to come to some important realisations and understand more about what I should be doing.

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